Here we are, preparing for week five after which all the teams will have played four games and I can try to run through the entire league in a panic at the quarter pole post, but we are already beginning to get a bit more of a feel for how the league is shaping up.

Of the young quarterbacks that seem to be the story of the league so far this year, Patrick Mahomes traveled to Denver Monday night and struggled comparatively for him so far this year but still found a way to get the win for the Kansas City Chiefs against the Broncos, whilst Mitch Trubisky threw for six touchdowns as the Bears thumped the Tamps Bay Buccaneers. I have only seen the highlights of the Bears game and yes there were a lot of wide open people catching the ball, but I thought Trubisky looked good in terms of his footwork and whilst you can’t expect this every week it is a promising sign that Matt Nagy can find a way to keep his team competitive in the division with Trubisky as his quarterback.

Speaking of the NFC North, the Green Bay Packers pitched a shutout against the Buffalo Bills who reverted to type and were bad in this game. This leaves them one game behind the Bears but one ahead of the Minnesota Vikings who could not keep up with the LA Rams on Thursday night but then no team has this season. With quarterbacks on the mind I should also mention that one of the reasons the Rams look so good is that Jared Goff is absolutely thriving in Sean McVay’s office and threw some absolutely amazing balls to beat the Vikings coverage. The Detroit Lions lost a close game to the Dallas Cowboys who managed to find some offence this week, which is not how the Lions and Matt Patricia will have wanted to follow up their impressive win against the Patriots.

I hesitate to do this, and it is perhaps lucky that Dan is on holiday this week as the Miami Dolphins got demolished in New England. There is a reason why everyone was hesitant to write off the Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, and this was it. They ran for one hundred and seventy-five yards and got themselves back to 2-2 before Julian Edelman comes back next week. Things could well still go wrong but it would surprise no one if come December the Patriots are once again top of their division.

The other perennial contender that is struggling at the start of this season were not so lucky as the Pittsburgh Steelers failed to win their second division game as they lost at home to the Baltimore Ravens to go 1-2-1. We have seen dips of form before with the Steelers, but with the Le’Veon Bell situation rumbling on and a defence that is not the kind we usually associate with this franchise there could be real problems. They face the Atlanta Falcons next week in a game that will very much be decided by who can score the most points as the Falcons are struggling to stop anybody on defence. In week four this benefited the Cincinnati Bengals who squeezed out a 37-36 win game despite losing Tyler Eifert to a season ending injury for the third straight year. This was heart breaking as Eifert had finally had a healthy offseason and it was a horrible ankle break, but at least it wasn’t connected to his previous back/ankle injuries. Eifert has so much talent and it’s really sad he’s so seldom been able to make the most of it or get to that lucrative multi-year second contract given what he has produced when he has been on the field.

The other big injury from the weekend was to Earl Thomas who had been playing well for the Seattle Seahawks despite hardly practicing in protest at the Seahawks refusal to trade him after not giving him a new contract. The middle digit he offered to the bench was a sign of the frustration a player must feel when what he feared materialises, but a broken leg is at least an injury that shouldn’t affect him next season. That may not be that much comfort to a safety going into his thirties though, particularly given the lack of activity in signing veteran free agent safeties this off-season and this is exactly why Le’Veon Bell is holding out as he fears a similar injury when running backs are treated with even more scepticism as they approach thirty.

I think I will end this week’s round up though with a team who may not be playing pretty football week to week, but have got themselves a winning record despite multiple injuries. In week one the teams with new head coaches went 0-7 but rookie head coach Mike Vrabel and his staff have now won three straight games despite Marcus Mariota sustaining a nerve injury in week one that has led to numbness in the fourth and fifth fingers of his throwing hand as well as grip issues, and his backup Blaine Gabbert being lost to a concussion in the opening quarter of their week three game against the Jaguars. The Titans may only be ranked twenty-sixth on offence by DVOA and fifteenth by defence, but they are top ten in special teams and are finding a way in win games. It also helped that Mariota looked better in this week’s overtime win against the Philadelphia Eagles where Mariota played with a modified glove on his throwing hand where the first and second fingers had been cut off so he could feel the ball but the glove could help his week fingers/hand. I’m sure this is not what offensive coordinator Matt LaFleur was not expecting to have to deal with this when he joined the staff, but the Titans have remained competitive in the AFC South and will be looking to build on this solid start. This is a pretty impressive achievement for Mike Vrabel who does not have that much coaching experience compared to a lot of coaches yet alone experience running a team. Let’s see how sustainable this is.

So Wednesday marks the transition from one NFL week to the next as I move from catching up on games and highlights, evaluating the news to preparing to make picks, even if I won’t start the coaching tape for Week three until tomorrow, but more of that later.

I’m currently reading The Score Take Care of Itself by Bill Walsh, and whilst I haven’t got very far yet, the section on the 49ers losing to the Miami Dolphins and coping with adversity rings ever so true. This week we have some coaches who will be facing down despair and problems, whilst others will have taken a moment to savour a win before swiftly moving on to the next week’s game.

The usual king of this, as exemplified by his famous, ‘We’re on to Cincinnati.’ press conference back in 2014, is Bill Belichick who will be trying to turn around the fortunes of his 1-2 team who got thoroughly outplayed by the Detroit Lions. I’m not sure too many people saw that one coming and we had a couple of reminders in week 3 of the old maxim that anything could happen on any given Sunday. The Patriots struggled on offensive as they continue to falter when running the ball and haven’t found the right mix in the passing game. We may see Josh Gordon if they can get him worked into the mix this week and after they take on the Dolphins this weekend they will have Julian Edelman back from suspension but it could take a while for this be sorted. I’m not going to overreact as it is early and I’ve written several times about how the Patriots plan to peak later in the season but for context the Patriots haven’t lost three straight since 2002 when they had a four game losing streak and missed out on the playoffs (they still had a winning 9-7 record).

Perhaps more surprising even than the Lions getting a win over the Patriots was the Buffalo Bills travelling to Minnesota and beating the Vikings 27-6 as Josh Allen managed to rushing touchdowns as well as a passing one. The Vikings will be looking to shake things off quickly as they are on the road in LA for the Thursday night game against the Rams and I’ve heard several people suggest that the Vikings had one eye on this game and that is why they had such a surprisingly poor game against a team they overlooked. I always find such talk a little troubling as I have no way of verifying and the infrastructure for the Vikings is such that my default would be to think it was an aberration that will quickly be righted but given the Packers (who the Vikings drew with last week) lost to Washington this week and the only team the Vikings have beat are the 49ers there is perhaps some concern that there might be deeper problems. Definitely one to keep and eye on, whilst I will have to take a look at Josh Allen on coaching tape this week to find out just how he managed to lead the Bills to a comfortable win.

In fact, there’s quite a lot I wish I could watch in more details including games I didn’t even see the highlights for. Apart from the two upsets I have already mentioned, the New York Giants travelled to the Houston Texans and won, surely placing even more pressure on head coach Bill O’Brien, whilst the Tennessee Titans managed to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars despite starting Blaine Gabbert and then having to play Marcus Mariota despite the limitations he has from a nerve injury when Gabbert was ruled out the game with a concussion. It has to be said that Mike Vrabel has done well to win two games given his quarterback situation and whilst it is far too small a sample size to draw any big conclusions about him as a coach, it is encouraging. Less encouraging is a third loss for Oakland Raiders under Jon Gruden who along with the Arizona Cardinals join the Texans as the only teams yet to register a win this season.

The Atlanta Falcons lost a barnstormer of a game 42-37 to the New Orleans Saints, with Drew Brees spinning to get the winning score and the Falcons losing a second starting safety for the season to injury so things are getting increasingly tough for them.

Sadly for the San Francisco 49ers, Jimmy Garoppplo was lost for the season with a torn ACL as he tried to gain some extra yards rushing out of bounds. There has been a lot of focus on the steps the NFL are taking to protect the quarterbacks and with the effect losing that one player has on a team I can understand it up to a point. However, with another seemingly form tackle by Clay Matthews resulting in a penalty, not to mention the string of penalties some linemen are picking up in games the new interpretation of the roughing the passer penalty is definitely a huge talking point. In fact the Dolpins (who I’m sure Dan would like me to remind you are 3-0) lost William Hayes to a torn ACL on a sack that head coach Adam Gase is blaming on the new rules. If players are injuring themselves trying to comply with the new rules and some of the bigger name quarterbacks are suggesting that things have gone too far then perhaps the league will look at it. I don’t want to argue that the league has gone soft, and frankly I think this has more to do with keeping the star quarterbacks playing the safety concerns, but a lot of the plays that have been penalised were simply tackles and I have no idea how a two hundred and ninety pound player fighting his way past an offensive linemen to tackle a quarterback, who are often not exactly small themselves, are supposed to lay said quarterback gently to the turf so they don’t risk an injury. You need a certain amount of momentum to tackle a player and explosiveness to get there before the pass is thrown so a lot of these defenders are being put in a very difficult if not an impossible position.

There have been a number of exciting games, and I think we’d all much rather be focussing attention on say the amazing start to the season Patrick Mahomes has had in Andy Reid’s offence or how the LA Rams are ominously rolling through the season, but until the roughing the passer penalties slow down the conversation about the zebras could keep dominating the conversation and frankly I’d much rather be focussed on the surprises and the good play that is happening in the league. After all, the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills won this week, all things are possible.

It is always tricky for me to finish up covering the offseason games on the blog as with them all taking place on the Thursday night, my usual times to watch games don’t quite work out before the season starts and suddenly the info doesn’t seem so relevant. I am sure no one is coming to the blog for game recaps and the final Hard Knocks episode is not even available yet, but now the dust has settled on the cuts and moves, the real interest is how things will shape up in the early season and what if any of my pre-season observations translate into the regular season.

I have taken a couple impressions away with me, but we won’t know if they were worth anything until the season gets going and so on to tonight’s season opener.

Chiefs @ Patriots (-8.5)

The traditional opener of the Super Bowl champions hosting a team on a Thursday night has rarely yielded an upset, but this may not be the case this year.

The New England Patriots had an impressive offseason, strengthening their options on offence, and up to a couple of weeks ago their only question seemed to be their pass rush. Even with the loss of Tom Brady’s favourite receiver Julian Edelman for the season, it is hard not to see the Patriots as the class of the AFC.

The Kansas City Chiefs have a more varied offseason with a mix of moves to build for the future despite still being competitive and possibly on requiring a little to put them over the top. They have stood behind Alex Smith as their starting quarterback despite trading up to pick quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the first round of April’s draft, but the Chiefs are clearly planning to let him sit and develop.

I am expecting the Patriots to start the season with a win, but I was impressed with what I saw of the Chiefs when they played the Bengals in pre-season and Andy Reid is a formidable coach with time to pre-pare and I do not think this game is as big of a walk over as some are predicting, which is why I’m picking the Chiefs to cover.

The big day is here, and despite the myriad of coverage that comes with the Super Bowl, here comes my own thoughts on the season that the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots have had and what we might see in tonight’s/tomorrow morning’s final game of the season. And there will be no discussion of the colour of the team’s jerseys!

The Atlanta Falcons were seeded second in the NFC having won their division with an 11-5 record. Splitting the season into four game sections as the coaches do, we can see that after losing their first game the Falcons won the first quarter by winning the next three games, they then split the next eight games across the middle quarters, but won out through the final quarter of the season and carried that momentum through the playoffs to the Super Bowl.

Their offence has played well all season, reaping the benefits of the blossoming relationship between offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and his quarterback Matt Ryan that led respectively to Shanahan being the expected head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and Ryan being named league MVP. Having focussed on what Ryan did and did not like from their first season together, the offence soared with Ryan throwing for just shy of five thousand yards, thirty-eight touchdowns and just seven interceptions. The offence scored thirty points or more in thirteen of their sixteen regular season games and both playoff games. This year they managed to balance the run game with the pass game, and that if defences focussed on stopping Julio Jones then Ryan was more than happy to distribute the ball with it not being unusual for five or more players to make catches during the game and thirteen different players caught touchdowns this year.

If the offence is what drives this Falcons team, then the defence has managed to do enough to win, which is impressive given the number of rookies and second year players that are contributing on this side of the ball. Their pass defence improved down the stretch despite losing Desmond Trufont to injury for most of the season, but their rush defence ranks only twenty-ninth by DVOA. They had a league leading fifteen and half sacks from Vic Beasley whilst one of their rookies Keanu Neal was second on the team in tackles as he drew comparisons with Seattle safety Kam Chancellor with his physical play. This is a unit that is a work in progress, but the profile of the players they are putting together is beginning to resemble the template of the defence in Seattle, which is hardly surprising given that this is where Head Coach Dan Quinn’s came from.

If the Falcons are melding their experienced offence with a young developing defence, then the Patriots are continuing their constant evolution in the relentless pursuit of excellence. This is the challenge that all NFL teams face, but few if any can match the success of Bill Belichik and Tom Brady, which is even more impressive given that it is taking place in a time of free agency and rules designed to enable all teams to be competitive.

The Patriots may have been missing Tom Brady for their first four games thanks to a dubious punishment from the deflate gate saga, from which I shall spare you a recap, but they still won three of those games including a 27-0 drubbing of the Houston Texans with their third string quarterback. Once Brady returned the offence hummed and the Patriots only lost one more game against the Seattle Seahawks as they went 14-2 and locked up the number one seed.

The Patriots offence is hard to generalise about as their approach changes from week to week depending on the opposition. It is perfectly possible for their incredible quarterback to be handing the ball off for the majority of the game if the plan demands it, or he could make fifty plus throws as the team pass their way to victory. What has been impressive is that they have achieved the results they have with Brady missing the games he did and Rob Gronkowski hardly playing this season thanks to injury. When he is on the field Gronkowski is putting together an argument to be considered one of the best tight ends to have played the game, but free agent pickup Martellus Bennett is a very good tight end in his own right and was second on the team in receiving yards this year and caught seven touchdowns. The other big free agent addition to the offence was receiver Chris Hogan, signed from the Buffalo Bills, who chipped in with nearly seven hundred receiving yards of his own and four touchdowns. It is worth noting that despite varying usage, running back LeGarrette Blount still ran for over a thousand yards this season and I haven’t even mentioned Julian Edelman who caught ninety-eight balls for eleven hundred yards himself.

If the offence was its usual supple and efficient self, the defence was less obviously excellent, but led the league in scoring defence and in the end it is points that really matter. The talk leading into the Super Bowl has been of Belichick’s ability to take away what the opposition does best, and certainly Belichick and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia are excellent coaches, but all coaches want to stop what the opposition does best. The question is usually how much of your resources are you prepared to commit to stopping that one thing as due to there only being eleven men on the field, by focussing on one thing you weaken the defence in other areas. One of the Patriots’ tactics that is often discussed has been the way they double the best receiver of the opposition with their second corner back and a safety, whilst placing their best corner man to man on the opposition second receiver to shut him down whilst the double team limits the number one receiver. However, even this is a simplification as what Belichick does so particularly well is place his players in a position to maximise their talent and so whilst Maclolm Butler is the most familiar name amongst the Patriots’ corners, thanks to his five foot eleven frame he tends not to be matched up against big physical receivers such as a Julio Jones.

This leading nicely into the Super Bowl matchup so let’s dive into that and I will start with the matchup I am most excited about, which is the Falcons’ offence versus the Patriots’ defence. The ability of the Patriots’ defence to force their opposition to play the game in a way they don’t want to will be tested by the flexibility of the Falcons’ offence approach. The Falcons are used to teams trying to take away Julio Jones, and with Matt Ryan’s ability to distribute the ball round his skill players and take advantage of both running backs’ ability to catch the ball coming out of the backfield they will feel confident in being able to move the ball. The Patriots run defence was ranked fourth in the league by DVOA and the injury to centre Alex Mack could hamper the interior of the Falcons’ offensive line, but if he gets time to throw the ball it is not hard to see Matt Ryan and his receivers ranked first by DVOA in passing attack take advantage of a Patriots defence that only ranked twenty-third against the pass. However, the Falcons will need to score points against a defence that may have given up yards, but their bend don’t break defence obviously limited their opponents effective, so as is so commonly the case red zone efficiency will be key. One last note on this matchup, this game pits the offence with the best yards after catch in the Falcons against the defence with the best yards allowed after the catch. Something may have to give.

The reason that the Falcons ability to score is so important is that for a lot of the time it has enabled their defence to play with a lead, and this has allowed the defence to rush the passer and do enough to win. However, unlike the Patriots’ disciplined front seven, the Falcons’ defence was twenty-ninth against the run, and what better way to counter act the Falcons high powered offence than for the Patriots to run the ball to control the clock and minimise the time the Falcons have the ball? There are some who are talking about how Belichick will put the ball in Brady’s hands to win the game, but I’m not so sure the ever pragmatic Belichick isn’t perfectly happy to muddy the game and win with defence like he did against the St Louis Rams and their legendary greatest show on turf offence. However, they have plenty of passing options to attack a young defence who might not have the experience to disguise their coverages and pass rushes, and if Brady goes to the line knowing what defence he is facing then he will simply excel. Although his approach is similar to the Seahawks, Dan Quinn and his staff have been more prepared to play man coverage with a single high safety mixed in with the trademark Seattle zone three coverage that also utilises a single high safety, but Brady will know what to look for to take advantage of this. The Patriots’ quarterback is also adept at stepping up in the pocket to avoid edge pass rushers such as Vic Beasley, and the return of line coach Dante Scarnecchia has seen a big improvement in the Patriots offensive line and much steadier play. In their playoff game against the Patriots, the Houston Texans were able to get pressure up the middle and rattle Brady, but whether the Falcons’ will be able to get an interior rush that can affect Brady will be a big question in this game.

Overall, it is hard to be definitive how this game will be played given it features two teams who have a lot of flexibility in their approach. There are a lot of narratives surrounding this game, the Falcons having the better players but the Patriots having the right team, Brady and Belichick’s excellence in the offseason, the supposed extra motivation for particular players which seems to be a bit of a nonsense given they are playing in a Super Bowl. Certainly more players on the Patriots have experience of playing in a Super Bowl, which might help, but this is not Dan Quinn’s first time coaching in a Super Bowl. I can see the Falcons running away with it, or the Patriots grinding out a convincing win, although I confess that with their experience I would favour the Patriots in a close game but not by much. The real x factor is the player we don’t know who will turn the game, Malcolm Butler made his name by his last second gaoling interception against the Seahawks, and you wouldn’t put it past the Patriots to have someone do this again with an unknown player, or for one of the first or second year players on the Falcons’ defence to really announce their arrival.

So we finally get to the start of the season, but we still can’t escape the deflategate saga, but after the opening parade of trophies and celebrations we could finally move on to football.

It was an interesting game with both teams transitioning on defence, but for me the game was won and lost in the red zone. The Steelers had no problem moving the ball as they were able to establish the run early, and actually generated more yards on offence that the Patriots. However, whilst they connected with a number of deep passes, their offence kept getting bogged down in the opponent’s half and they lost six points with Josh Scobee missing his first two field goal attempts. The Patriots however, after a first series stall, managed to get a two touchdown lead and were never really troubled by the Steelers for the rest of the game.

The Steelers offence looked good for the most part, and they certainly were prepared for Le’Veon Bell’s suspension, with DeAngelo Williams throwing off the years and running for one hundred and twenty-seven yards at an average of six yards per carry. The deep ball was also working against the Patriots rebuilt secondary, with several such passes going to Anotio Brown, Markus Wheaton somehow getting his feet in after Ben Roethlisberger was given an age to find a receiver, and Darrius Heyward-Bey managing to get behind Bradley Fletcher on a go route to gain fourty-three yards that was the Steelers’ longest play of the game. The problem is that they stalled at the Patriots’ twenty-six and twenty-eight yard line for the missed field goals, got field goals from the twenty-six and six yard lines, whilst only scoring two touchdowns.

The Patriots rebuilt their defence in the offseason, but appeared to be focussing on their front seven rather than trying to replace the cornerbacks they let go. However, right from the first series they appeared to be soft against the run, and given the success the Steelers were having, I was surprised to see them run a trick play early that gave Antonio Brown the chance to throw the ball, but which merely led to a sack. The Patriots were able to generate some pressure, sacking Roethlisberger two times in addition to getting Brown down, but at other times big Ben had plenty of time to throw the ball and they were beaten deep a number of time. What they were able to do though, was to bend and not break, as the defence managed to stop the Steelers as the field got shorter. We will have to see how this works as the season goes along, but they did enough in this game to get the job done.

The Patriots on offence on the other, hand were highly effective at what they do, and it was the usual suspects. The reinstated Tom Brady threw for two hundred and eighty-eight yards with twenty five completions from thirty-two attempts. The majority of these passes went to Julian Edleman and Rob Gronkowski, with Gronkowski being the kind of red zone threat that the Steelers struggled to find. Their was no sign of the early wobble that troubled the Patriots last season, and I go back to the loss of their long time line coach Dante Scarnecchia and the resulting adjustment as a possible cause for this. They ran the ball fairly well with Dion Lewis, and with Brady they always have a chance, but I might be a little concerned for them if Gronk or Eldeman were out for any stretch of time.

The Steelers defence looked off for most of the night, there were flashes of what they were trying to do, but there appeared to be a lot of miscommunication and they did nothing to allay the fears regarding their secondary. It will be interesting to see how the defence progresses as they gain experience in the changed system, and they will have been happy to see their first round draft pick Alvin Dupree pick up a sack in his first game.

Finally I want to look at two specific plays that caught my eye during the game. This season I will be working on a series I will call adventures in film. I’ll be looking at a game from the previous week once the tape becomes available, and picking out certain plays from the Thursday night games when I write up that game.

The first play that struck me was a beautifully timed completion to Danny Amendola. The Patriots lined up shotgun with five receivers, three on the left and two on the right. The Patriots snap the ball and the Steelers rush with four. Danny Amendola is the closest receiver to the line on the left side with Gronkowski and then Edleman outside him; Amendola runs an out then up route whilst Gronkowski runs a hitch that sets a pick to get Amendola open whilst Edleman runs a go route. Ryan Shazier has a relatively clear path to Brady, but on receiving the snap Brady takes a further three step drop and then floats a ball over the trailing William Gay for an eighteen yard completion before anyone can get to him. It was a lovely play, and I don’t know how a defence can counter it with Brady getting rid of the ball so quickly and given that the safety has to honour the go route of Edleman.

The other play I wanted to look at was the sack by safety Will Allen. The Patriots line up with 11 personnel (ie one tight end and one running back) in a shotgun formation with Gronkowski the right side tight end and running back Dion Lewis to Brady’s left. The Steelers are in a 3-3 nickel with single high safety coverage and a linebacker playing as one of the down linemen. Will Allen just times his run to perfection so he’s moving when the ball is snapped but no one accounts for him as a pass rusher. Thanks to William Gay rushing from the nickel corner spot on the same side as Allen, running back Dion Lewis picks up Gay, leaving Allen a free run to the quarterback. What caught my eye about this play initially was the timing of Allen’s run, but in looking at it on coaching tape, it also demonstrates that although the defence maybe changing, the zone blitz is not done in Pittsburgh. They may have sent a corner and a safety, but it was a classic overload of one side whilst all four linebackers dropping into coverage, so the defence only actually rushed four, sticking to the aim of the zone blitz to generate a pass rush safely.

The NFL media are already moving on to the offseason, but I wanted to go through the coaching tape of the Super Bowl and have some things to say before I take a little break and start preparing for the next year.

It might seem an odd place to start, given that one of the things I do as a writer is create narratives around games, but the first thing I want to look at is the narrative surrounding Tom Brady and complain. To me it seems reductive and absurd to place as much emphasis on how many Super Bowls a quarterback wins when weighing his career as has been done since Brady won his fourth. There is no doubt that Brady has had an amazing career, and deserves to be in the conversation with the very best who have played the game, but his legacy should not rest quite so heavily on whether an undrafted rookie corner back makes a great interception at the end of the game or not. The game of American football is one of teams and coaches, and whilst playing quarterback is one of the most complex tasks we ask of an athlete, and there is perhaps no more important single player on the field of play, the quarterback simply cannot win games on their own even if they can possibly lose them. Just look at what happened to Aaron Rodgers this year, or Dan Marino across his career for evidence of how outstanding quarterback play doesn’t guarantee you a Super Bowl ring, Peyton Manning would have a few more if it did.

The other frustration coming out of the Super Bowl was the narrative surrounding the Seahawks play call that led to Russell Wilson throwing an interception from the Patriots’ one yard line with twenty six seconds left on the clock. Now I don’t like the call, and running the ball would seem to be the answer in this situation when you have one of the great power backs in the game, but it was Pete Carroll’s aggressive nature that got them into the position to win this game, as how many coaches would have had the conversation he did with Russell Wilson with six seconds left in the first half and agree to throw the ball to try to get the touchdown and risk not getting any points, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when he makes another aggressive call. You can’t divorce the result from the call when evaluating a play, but given the sensationalist nature of society which seems to mean that everything is either the best or worst thing to have happened, ever… then call maybe wasn’t as bad as some would have you believe. Still, you run the ball there don’t you? I would.

So what did I learn from watching the game back on film? Well everybody is saying that this was an instant classic, and I agree. We had two well coached teams that played to very high standard, and who gave us an exciting close game that went back and forth. Either team could have won, and with a few different bounces of the ball could have done so.

The first big story of the game for me was health, and specifically that of the Seattle defence. As people have be tweeting and writing, it wasn’t so much the Legion of Boom as the Legion of Wound. We already knew that Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas were injured, and Kam Chancellor came into the game with a knee injury, but all three injuries were more serious than they were letting on and are facing various surgeries this offseason. In the actual game they all played very well, with perhaps a few occasions where Rob Gronkowski got away from Chancellor enough to make plays being the most obvious effect. However, it was the cumulative effect of the injuries on defence that got them in the end.

In the first quarter the Seahawks couldn’t get anything going on offence, and so their defence spent a lot of time on the field, holding true to Caroll’s bend don’t’ break philosophy and coming up with a huge end zone pick when Brady let fly with a pass vaguely intended for Julian Edleman. The pass was not a good one, but this play almost turned the game in the Patriots favour in a strange way. Jeremy Lane took a couple of steps back to drop into a zone coverage, and intercepted the ball, but on the ensuing run back he landed awkwardly, breaking both bones in his forearm and putting him out of the game.

As a result of this, Tharold Simon came into the game as the nickel corner, although it was Byron Maxwell who slid in to cover the slot receiver with Simon on the outside. This in of itself might not have been a problem, as he did well when matched up against Brandon LaFell going deep, but he did not have the lateral quickness to keep with the shifty Edleman. This being the well coached game that it was, Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels were not going to miss this opportunity, and you could frequently see Edleman coming across the field with Smith trailing behind him. This use of slot receiver style quick underneath routes both attacked the weak areas of the Seahawks scheme and played to the strength of Brady.

The other injury on the Seahawks defence that helped the Patriots offensive performance was the loss of Cliff Avril in the third quarter, slowing a pass rush that was already struggling to reach Brady. The Patriots o-line did enough to keep the passing game working, but it was the quick drops and passes by Brady that won this game. The Patriots couldn’t run the ball except occasionally when it was setup by the pass, but the accumulation of these injuries to the Seahawks defence helped enable it.

So if the defence of the Seahawks couldn’t stifle the Patriots enough to win, what happened on the other side of the ball? This year’s Patriots defence was the best they’ve had for years and their secondary was more than enough to cope with the Seahawks’ starters. In fact for most of the game, the Seahawks moved the ball in bursts. Their running game was pretty effective, although I was surprised that they didn’t run Rusell Wilson more, but they struggled to maintain drives. However, for a while it did look like the MVP was going to be a receiver who had never caught a pass in the NFL before this game.

The six foot five Chris Matthews announced himself in the biggest game of his career with a forty-four yard catch over the five foot ten Kyle Arrington, and this match up was such a problem that Arrington ended up coming out of the game for Malcolm Butler, and Brandon Browner begged for the assignment of covering the tall Seattle receiver. Matthews caught the touchdown that tied up the scores at half time, and finished the game with over one hundred yards receiving and that touchdown, but he did struggle once the Patriots adjusted. That said, the Seahawks really should have won this game, even if the Patriots did have the upper hand for arguably three quarters.

It will be interesting to see how Pete Carroll picks up the pieces of the aftermath of this game, and build a team next season having lost coaches and with everyone second guessing that play call.

The Patriots will probably roll on, but they have their own offseason moves to make, and at some point Tom Brady might stop being able to do this.

I am going to ease off a bit as we head into the offseason as I want to do a self scout of what I did with the blog this year and come up with ways to improve for next season.

I will leave you with three plays that jumped out on me as I watched the tape. I’ll begin with the first Juliain Edleman catch against Simons, where he started as the outside receiver, ran a drag route across the field, caught the ball and went for twenty-three yards. Second was a screen to Shane Vereen that caught my eye as I was generally unimpressed by the Patriots o-line in the run game, but centre Bryan Stork did a really good job of getting out to the linebacker on this play so Vereen could go down the sideline.

The final play that stands out, in a year of impossible catches, was Jermaine Kearse catching that deep ball, despite Butler making a good play on the ball and it bouncing off three parts of Kearse’s body before he was able to reel it in. It may not have been better than the Odell Beckham catch, but it’s a pretty good way to leave the 2014 season.